


Red

by Coshledak, raisingmybanner



Series: get myself back home [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Brogane, Foster Care, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-04-06 22:52:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14067333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coshledak/pseuds/Coshledak, https://archiveofourown.org/users/raisingmybanner/pseuds/raisingmybanner
Summary: “Favorite food, favorite color,” she repeats.He’s had a placement like this before, where they asked about him beforehand. He remembers the joy bubbling up in him then as he tried to think about his favorite color. His favorite kind of toy.They care about me. They want to know what I like.But it didn’t really matter. All that faded away the first time that nervous energy snapped.A direct sequel to "The One," which explores Keith's perspective.





	Red

**Author's Note:**

> "The One" was written by Coshledak, and "Red" is written by raisingmybanner. They're tied together, so you really have to read "The One" to get the full impact. : )
> 
> Thanks for the nice comments on the previous fic! We would like to say, though, that we know Brogane isn't really a popular thing compared to Sheith. You don't need to inform us that you ship them! A lot of people do. However, we don't, and it would be! Gross! For a romantic attraction! To develop! In this! AU! So it's not going to happen. But if you want some good, good Brogane stuff, then we're your writers!

By the time Keith is back at Lighthouse, the black plastic bag that holds what little he owns gripped in one hand, he’s almost forgotten Lexa’s bone-crushing hug and promise to write. She won’t write, and they both know it. Even if she landed with a family that let her, she would be too busy making friends who weren’t screw-ups.

Lexa had dreams, she’d told him late one night as they lay shoulder-to-shoulder in his bed. Their eyes focused up at the fading glow in the dark stars pressed into the ceiling for a kid ten foster cycles ahead of him. 

“I’m going to age out, and I’m going to ninja right into college. No one will ever know I was in the system. They have amazing grants for kids like us, did you know? As long as you have good grades, you can practically go for free.”

“You won’t get good grades if you stay up all night pretending these dumb stars are real,” he muttered, and she jostled her whole body against him so that he almost fell off the bed.

“Shut up, loser,” she said with a laugh. “You know how I _know_ I’m gonna go places?”

He didn’t say anything, but she didn’t need him to.

“I make friends wherever I go.” She said it like a secret, and pointed up at a star. “I make smart friends. Popular friends. People I can keep in touch with that I can use to connect me to better things.”

Keith looked over at her. Her face was dipped in the sickly light of a streetlamp. The color was ghoulish, but her expression was earnest. She meant what she said, and it gave Keith a pang that didn’t make sense. He looked back at the ceiling.

“But you’re right. I can’t go places if I stay up all night with little kids.”

“You’re the one who said you had a nightmare,” Keith said, irritation flaring up in him as she sat up. “Lay off.”

“Whoah. Clearly you need your beauty sleep,” Lexa said with mock offense.

She poked him in the forehead and he swatted her hand away just a second too late. She laughed and told him goodnight as she left, but he didn’t answer.

Lexa was going places. She knew it, and Keith knew it too.

As long as she stopped looking up at those stupid fake stars.

But either way, Keith knows he’s never going to hear from her again. He drops his bag into an empty drawer and claims a bunk, wondering how long he’ll have to wait before his caseworker calls him into his office to sigh at him and remind him to keep his fists to himself.

Keith guesses he has four hours, _max._

He’s called into the office two hours after he arrives, right after he’s found a copy of a novel written in the past decade. He flips back and forth through it while the man talks at him. It’s a small book, and thin, but the first chapter is written with a style that sounds almost pretentious. Keith can’t decide if he likes it or not, although he knows he would much rather be reading it than listening to this man say the same words in different orders, like Keith can’t comprehend basic English.

“You had a good stay at the Rosins’,” the man is saying. “I might be able to place you one more time.”

“With someone who will keep me for more than six months?” Keith deadpans, eyes on the cover art at the book. A tendril of smoke against a black background. Does the book have underage smoking? That doesn’t sound like the kind of book Lighthouse would allow in the library.

The man sighs at the question, and Keith rolls his eyes. Usually the man complains that Keith doesn’t talk, but then when he does, he’s rewarded with a sigh.

“You should be grateful that the Rosins agreed to take you at all,” the man says, a slight edge to his voice that is quickly worn smooth with exhaustion.

“I’m sure you gave them a nice paycheck,” Keith says, quietly enough that he’s not sure the man can hear him.

He sighs, which could indicate anything.

“Just keep your nose clean, Kogane.”

He hesitates, and his head moves. He’s looking at the closed door; Keith can see out of the corner of his eye. There’s a pause, and Keith opens the book back up to where he was reading before he was called in.

“This next placement will be your last, however it ends.”

His voice is quiet and different than usual; Keith actually looks up at him. It sounds less professional. But somehow, even more exhausted.

“It’s too expensive to keep moving you around, and as you get older it’s less likely that anyone will agree to take you,” the caseworker says, looking past him, over his shoulder. “It’s easier for the state to keep you here.”

Keith doesn’t say anything. This isn’t information he didn’t already know, but it’s a little surprising to hear it from the sighing man who always said what he was supposed to say.

The man meets his eyes for a moment before he puts his hand on Keith’s file. The rubber band is thin and stretched too-tightly over the mound of paperwork that defines him.

He looks like he’s going to say something else, but the moment passes and he stands up.

“Stay out of trouble,” he repeats, gesturing toward the door as he walks over to a filing cabinet.

Keith makes no such promise, but he leaves the office.

He can hear a buzz as someone enters the front door. The secretary’s voice chases him as he starts to leave the administrative wing.

“Your 2 o’clock is here.”

“Who?” Keith can almost hear the man sigh, even from this distance.

“The Shiroganes.”

The sigh is definitely audible this time as Keith pushes open the door that leads to the space he’s much more familiar with. “Send them in.”

\-----

Keith thinks that this book was probably not supposed to be in the library when he reaches the middle of it and the girl dies in a tragic car accident. Usually Lighthouse only allows books with positive messages, and death was not positive. Someone probably left it behind by mistake and it got shoved into the tiny library because it was a book and that’s where books went.

Still, Keith finds it easier to read the book than to interact with anyone else so he keeps reading it even though he doesn’t particularly like it. 

He finishes it the next day at lunch, and immediately returns it and checks out another one. Not by the same author. This one is clearly supposed to be some kind of chick lit, but it was the first one he grabbed that was in decent shape.

He doesn’t care about doing what his caseworker said. As a general rule, he doesn’t care about doing what anyone said. Adults were paid to interact with him, and if he did everything he was supposed to, how would they earn their paycheck?

He doesn’t even care _that much_ about aging out at Lighthouse. He’s sort of always expected that would happen to him. And it seemed like everyone else knew it too. It was like this big secret, except everyone knew it and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out. It’s not like he harbored any dreams of being adopted; those were gone when he was sent back to Lighthouse on his 10th birthday with his arm in a brace. Nine was supposed to be the magic age, but it disappeared without him even realizing it, somewhere between Adam’s screams and the blinding lights of the hospital.

So he doesn’t really know why he spends the next couple of days just laying on his bunk and reading, switching books when he finishes one, idly wishing he could have left Danny and M’s before the standardized testing and not after, ignoring anyone who tried to talk to him. He doesn’t know why he does it, but he does.

“Hey, punk, nice to have you back.”

Someone shoves Keith in the back, too hard to be friendly but light enough that he could probably claim he meant it to be. Keith's stomach hits the edge of the sink, and he recognizes Derek’s voice and smirks. He was a few years older than Keith, but Keith had gotten the better of him several times. It had been a few days since that nervous energy had bubbled under the surface, but he could feel it now, sharpening his senses.

“Can’t say the same about you,” he quips without looking behind him. He reaches for the faucet, and then feels a hand around his shirt collar.

The nervous energy spikes along with his body’s natural instinct to _get him off_ , and Keith twists around suddenly. The hand loosens in surprise, and Keith is almost taken aback by how much Derek has grown in the six months it’s been since they saw each other. Keith has been growing too, but it’s nothing compared to Derek’s solid frame.

His surprise must show on his face, because it’s Derek’s turn to smirk as he reaches for Keith’s collar again. He’s almost a full head taller than Keith now.

“Jealous, pip-squeak? Heard you stayed at Danny and M’s. Nice place, huh? Too bad they didn’t want you either. You kick their dog or something?”

Keith sidesteps the hand and throws a punch into the opening Derek always leaves under his left arm, but his fist hits more muscle than he was expecting.

“I’ve been working out,” Derek says, shoving Keith backward into the counter and holding him there with a hand on his chest. The edge of the counter bites into his back hard enough that Keith knows he’ll bruise later. A spike of pain lances up his back and muddies into that twisted energy, waiting to uncoil. “That’s how you get the girls, you know. Not that you probably care, huh?”

He laughs at his own joke, but Keith barely lets him get a chortle out before he kicks at Derek’s knee and tries to twist away from the hand on his chest.

“Trying to escape, pip-squeak?” Derek says, moving his legs away from the kick just in time.

But Keith isn’t trying to escape. He frees himself from the pressure keeping him against the counter and launches himself forward, at Derek. Either he’s not used to his growing frame, or the coiled energy snaps with more force than he thought, because the two of them are knocked backwards into a bathroom stall. Derek grunts at the impact of his back against the metal, and Keith is already aiming a punch for his face.

Derek sees him coming but can’t move enough to do more than absorb a glancing blow along his jaw; but he takes full advantage of Keith’s stretch to knee him in the stomach. Keith half-crumples, winded and coughing, and Derek knees him again, this time in the face. Bright lights cluster and diffuse in his vision and he’s on the floor, sliding backward before he quite remembers how he got there.

He sees Derek’s feet stepping toward him, but he’s already sprung back to his feet, the taste of blood pumping hot over his tongue from somewhere. He dodges Derek’s heavy blow and skids to the side, far enough to land a punch on Derek’s side that knocks him off balance.

The bathroom door opens, and Keith hears _”fight!”_ from somewhere that seems much further away than the electric current pumping in his ears.

Derek stumbles and Keith kicks him in the back of the knee as hard as he can, already jumping on his back before he even quite hits the floor. Derek has to throw both hands forward and barely keeps his head from hitting the bathroom counter, which gives Keith enough time to throw an elbow into his shoulder blade.

Derek howls and twists, throwing Keith onto the floor and swinging a fist that Keith doesn’t have time to avoid. The fist catches him on his cheekbone and slams the back of his head into the floor, but before Derek can do anything else, someone is dragging the two of them away from each other.

It takes another minute before Keith can hear anything other than echoey throbs of noise, and the first thing he hears is his caseworker’s name. He groans as a Lighthouse worker deposits him none-too-gently in front of the kitchen sink and tells him to “clean himself up.”

Keith starts to quip about having a concussion, but a sharp pain in his lip cuts the words off before they even leave his mouth. He spits into the sink, and it’s all blood.

“Come on, kid,” the man says, shifting his position against the counter. “Unless you need to go to the nurse before you meet with Rodge.” 

_Can I go to the nurse instead of meeting with him?_ Keith wants to ask, but he doesn’t try speaking again. 

He turns on the water and rips off a paper towel, dampening it and running it over his face. Not much blood there, although his cheek and eye are throbbing something fierce now that the simmering energy has died back down. He pats gently on his lip, but the towel comes away clean there, too. The blood is mostly on his chin and neck from where it dripped out of his mouth, it looks like. It takes a couple of paper towels to wipe that away, and by then he’s mustered up the courage to poke around inside his mouth with his tongue to locate the source of the blood.

There’s a puncture on the inside of his lower lip. Keith has a flash of Derek’s knee hitting him in the face and thinks it must have sliced against his teeth. Annoying, but not the worst thing. A quick tongue inspection reassures him that his teeth are all still accounted for, although a few are a bit looser than they used to be. He spits blood into the sink again, then cups his hands to get a mouthful of water to rinse most of the blood out. The water stings, but that’s the best he can do without the nurse.

It’s then that he realizes he has a split knuckle too, when the water licks away the crusted trail of blood and stabs viciously into the cut.

He turns around when he’s sure the blood is gone from his hand, and the worker takes a closer look at him. He sees the man’s eyes move from his eyes, to his cheek, to his mouth, and down to his hand that’s clenched into a fist again without him realizing it.

“You need to see the nurse,” he decides, and Keith groans again.

“I’m _fine_ ,” he tries to say, although the ‘f’ is a little airy as he tries not to move his lip too much.

The nurse was more inclined to leave you in more pain than you arrived with, although she was the only source of painkillers in the building. The worker ignores Keith’s protests, though, and leads him to the nurse’s office, where the woman thankfully starts him with a couple acetaminophen and a band-aid for his knuckle before she silently applies something foul-smelling to his eye with heavy pressure that almost makes him gasp. She then inspects his lip, tells him to come back tomorrow so she could decide if he needed a stitch or two, and gives him an icepack to alternate between his cheek and his eye.

By then, Keith has almost forgotten that his caseworker wanted to see him, but the man who hadn’t left his side since the bathroom has apparently _not_ forgotten, because he deposits Keith at the door.

“Kogane's here,” he calls into the office.

“Come in, Keith,” the man sighs, and Keith walks into the office, prepared to tune out whatever lecture the man felt like giving today.

“I’m glad to see you’re taking my advice to heart,” the man says, with a deadpan sarcasm that Keith doesn’t hear very often. 

He slumps into the chair and picks a point above the man’s shoulder to stare at while he pretends to listen.

“But, provided they don’t change their mind after hearing about this, you’ve been placed.”

Keith is thinking about where he left his book, and it takes him a moment to realize what the caseworker said. His eyebrows furrow and he shifts his gaze three inches to the left, into the man’s eyes. He’s looking directly at him, an inscrutable look on his face.

“It’s a nice family,” he continues, looking down at a thin folder that’s opened on his desk. “A new one.”

Keith can see a photo on top of the papers, which is clearly what the man is looking at, but he doesn’t look at it.

“You remember what I said last time?” the man said, his eyes moving back to Keith’s.

Keith doesn’t answer. The man isn’t expecting an answer. He just sighs after a moment of silence.

“Don’t — this is a fresh start for you, Keith. Don’t screw it up. And _don’t_ ruin them.”

The way he says it makes Keith feel like the King Midas of screw-ups. Like if he can just not touch anything, maybe he can age out at a placement instead of at Lighthouse. If he can just keep his hands in his pockets and his head down, maybe he won’t _spread._

“You hear me, Kogane?”

Keith looks down at the photo for a moment. Enough to discern three figures, all of them tall enough to be adults. _Don’t touch anything, Kogane._ Then he looks up at the caseworker.

“Can I go?” his voice is irritatingly calm. 

He knows adults hate it when he talks like that when they’re trying to be serious, and he can see a flash of anger on the caseworker’s face. There’s an answering flash of vicious victory somewhere inside of him, and a grin tweaks the corner of his mouth.

“I don’t know why I bother,” the caseworker mutters, closing the file folder and waving at the door. 

Keith stands up and walks to the door, but not fast enough to miss the muttered, “Heaven help the Shiroganes.”

\-----

A few days later, one of the Lighthouse employees comes up to Keith with a pad of clinical yellow sticky notes and a pen.

“Your caseworker is getting your information together, and your placement family asked for your favorite food and favorite color.”

She looks like she’s prepared to write down whatever Keith says, readying the pen over the post-it. Keith just looks at her.

“Favorite food, favorite color,” she repeats.

He’s had a placement like this before, where they asked about him beforehand. He remembers the joy bubbling up in him then as he tried to think about his favorite color. His favorite kind of toy. _They care about me. They want to know what I like._ But it didn’t really matter. All that faded away the first time that nervous energy snapped.

“Liver and puce,” he says, turning around and opening his book again.

“Keith,” the woman says patiently.

He swings up into his bunk and settles in, his eyes searching for the place where he stopped.

“What do you want me to say?” he deadpans.

“The truth, preferably.”

He doesn’t answer, starting to read again. The worker just sighs, rips off the top sticky note, and puts it next to him on the bed with a pen.

“Write something that answers the question. I’ll be back in an hour.”

Her footsteps fade away, and Keith immerses himself into the world of Mark Twain. It’s an old book, but in good shape. And despite knowing the author, he hadn’t heard of this particular book.

He’s halfway through the book when he hears footsteps again. He ignores them and keeps reading. He hopes that if he’s as quiet as possible, whoever it is won’t notice him and he won’t have the opportunity to find out how high that energy has risen while he hasn’t been paying attention. His lip still throbs and his head aches dully — he doesn’t feel like getting into another fight.

A hand reaches up toward him, though, which startles him. He pulls away, snapping the book closed, but it’s just the Lighthouse worker again who chuckles.

“Just me, Keith.”

He frowns as she grabs the post-it note and pulls it down to see if he’s written anything.

“Come on, Keith,” she says, putting the sticky note next to him again when she realizes it’s empty. “Don’t make me stand here and watch you. How hard is it to write down some things that you like?”

Keith’s heart is still pounding, and he’s trying not to let anything snap. It wasn’t Derek. It wasn’t Derek. _It’s not Derek; pull yourself together, Kogane. You scared of the guy, now?_

“Keith.” Her voice is abrupt, jarring him out of his thoughts, and he’s speaking before he even knows what he’s going to say.

“I don’t _care,”_ he snaps. “I don’t _care_ about colors, or food, or anything. Leave me alone.”

She folds her arms, unfazed by the loudness of his voice, which he didn’t notice until he heard it echo in the empty room.

“Write. Something. Down.”

” _No_ ,” he says through gritted teeth. He feels the fire licking at the back of his tongue. Why won’t she just leave him _alone_? “Go away.”

She doesn’t move, doesn’t uncross her arms, doesn’t look away. For some reason, that makes it worse, and he can feel the heat in his eyes now, pumping through his throbbing lip.

“Leave me _alone_!” he shouts, leaning suddenly toward her, a hand grabbing at the edge of the bunk with a grip that hurts his knuckles.

She doesn’t flinch. He’s sure she’s seen things a lot scarier than a twelve-year-old having a temper tantrum — which is exactly what’s happening right now, although he’s too angry to be embarrassed about it.

“I’ll be back,” she says simply, turning on her heel and leaving the room.

The build-up without a resolution is almost worse than if he had committed the cardinal sin of Lighthouse and put his hands on a worker. The fire has nowhere to go, and his quick bursts of breath are fanning the flames instead of blowing them out. He jerks backward, but his hands don’t quite let go of the railing, and his fingernails scrape the wood with jarring unevenness. That sends a shiver up his spine that feels like spiders crawling up his back, and he slams a fist into the railing. It’s solid wood and doesn’t give way, although it does send pain lancing up his arm. 

He digs the heels of his hands into his eye, ignoring the breathless pain that comes when he smashes into the tender one, trying to force the fire back down. Trying to regain some amount of control.

He feels like he hasn’t moved in an hour when he’s suddenly aware of someone standing beside the bunk. He rips his hands away from his eyes, now spotty and blurry and red as he blinks them into focus. It’s the Lighthouse worker, reaching for the post-it.

“Hang on,” Keith mutters, snatching it out of the woman’s reach along with the pen.

He sticks it to the cover of the book and scrawls the first thing he can think of. The color throbbing vibrant across his vision.

_Red is okay._


End file.
